Third Eye/I (II), Other Gallery Shanghai, March 17-April 17, 2011

THIS EXHIBITION WAS CLOSED BY THE CHINESE CULTURE DEPARTMENT. ITS CENSOR COINCIDENTALLY OCCURRED 4 DAYS AFTER THE ARREST OF ARTIST AI WEIWEI. BELOW ARE THE REASONS GIVEN BY THE CHINESE CULTURE DEPARTMENT AS TO WHY I T WAS CLOSED?:
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The Third Eye——Iranian Contemporary Art Exhibition

Stop Show Announcement

As in consideration of different culture identification problem in the exhibition “The Third Eye-Iranian Contemporary Art Exhibition” and the long term support on the China-Iran culture communication and friendly cooperation. Here is the suggestion by the department in charge that Other Gallery | Shanghai Space call off the exhibition, inconvenient to you and your understanding will! We will as always commit ourselves to the academic development of contemporary art and promote art activities in all nations and regional interaction.
     

Other Gallery
Apr.7 2011
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The Third Eye

Curated by Raul Zamudio
Other Gallery, Shanghai, China
March 17-April 17, 2011
Artists:
Majeed Beenteha, lives and works in New York City
Ala Dehghan, lives and works in Karaj and Tehran
Shahram Entekhabi, lives and works in Berlin
Parastou Forouhar, lives and works in Germany
Pouran Jinchi  lives and works in New York City
Raha Rastifard, lives and work in Berlin and Tehran
Vahid Sharifian, lives and works in Tehran  
Celia Eslamieh Shomal, lives and works in Amsterdam 
Mehran Tizkar, lives and works in Berlin and Tehran  

The Third Eye is an exhibition of Iranian artists that culls its title from disparate sources. It uses as curatorial framework the cinematic vernacular for the camera, known as “the third eye,” with the notion of third space articulated by geographer Edward Soja, and that of the literary critic and theorist Homhi Bhaba. As a film trope, the third eye is the camera lens that captures the world independent from the human eye; in doing so, it can reveal to us its overlooked beauty as well as exposing the social disparity.

The artists use these open-ended narratives as thematic touch stones as well as reflecting on an ever-changing world where tradition rubs up against the contemporaneous, religion with the secular, and orthodoxy with heterodoxy. The Third Eye does not claim to be representative of art being made by Iranians today, regardless whether they live within their country or abroad; rather, it serves to underscore the heterogeneous nature of an emerging contemporary artistic practice that evinces an artistic vocabulary rooted in a formal, social, and cultural crucible situated at a nexus between the past, the present, and the future.

A catalog will be published in conjunction with the exhibition with aritsts' statements, bios, full color reproductions of artworks, and an essay by the curator.

Link: http://www.artlinkart.com/en/space/exh_yr/8eeatCul